Arbitrary Rulings 7

Strikes - Not to put too fine a point on it or anything, but if you're not supporting the currently-striking members of the WGA and the Broadway stagehands union, then you've basically got Sumner Redstone's balls in your mouth right now. How's that taste? Like a dusty, old-man nutsack? Good... learn to love it; soon you'll grow to associate that particular taste with greed, power, and that tremor in your guts that bubbles up every time another piece of your soul dies. Sure, you'll probably be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams... but you'll still have an elderly gentleman's junk in your face 24/7. Personally, when it comes down to the choice of being tea-bagged by a billionaire tycoon, or not being tea-bagged by a billionaire tycoon... well... I guess I just don't mind waiting for new episodes of The Office until a fair deal is hammered out. But that's me.

Hip Bones - My grandmother took a nasty fall a few days ago and shattered her hip bone. After surgery and some very liberal doses of pain medicine, she's doing okay now; maybe not back to 100%, but definitely on the mend. This is great news, of course, and it means that I can now focus my energies on dealing with the real villain of this personal slice of family drama: The Hip Bone. Seriously, Hip Bone, just what the fuck is your problem? I understand that, as a person's years advance, you're going to weaken and degrade a bit; that's just common sense. But have you really let yourself go to the point where you can't withstand a simple slip n' fall? I mean, it's not like my grandmother was BASE jumping or anything. She didn't get sacked by the New England Patriot's defensive line after a botched hand-off. She was mopping the floor (which, at her age, she shouldn't have been doing anyway, but that's a digression best worked out amongst my family, as opposed to in cyberspace)!!! Hip Bone, you really let us down... I know you're a vital joint of the human body's skeletal system and, thus, we should cut you some slack, but no. It's for that very reason that I feel you should be raked across the coals of my righteous indignation; you are vital, therefore, you should always be at your best, your strongest, your most secure. In short, you failed, Hip Bone. I hope that you are very, very ashamed.

Adorable Kittens Wearing Wooly Caps - The last two items were pretty heavy, so I'm including this particular entry merely as a way to lighten the mood and make everyone smile. Click on the link, feel the warmth bloom in your heart like a single Daisy through a crack in the asphalt of an abandoned basketball court in the bad part of town, and then let's all move on with a spring in our step and a song in our heart.

Fresca - Delicious! Though it's not a beverage that I'd order in a restaurant or at any sort of social gathering. While it tastes like a fresh, clean kiss from the Princess of all Things Citrus, it's definitely a little fruity in every sense of the word. I mean, okay, clearly you've gathered from this blog that I'm nothing if not a man who's secure in his sexuality; I've talked more about my love of musical theater than any straight guy ever has in the history of "is he, or isn't he" debates. Still, ordering an ice-cold glass of Fresca in public would illicit the same reaction amongst hetero males that the"I Hate N-word" sign in Die Hard 3 elicited amongst the good people of Harlem. And, in my case, Samuel L. Jackson would more than likely not be around to save my butt from a sound beating and possible stabbing.

Bright Lights, Big City - I've been reading Jay McInerney's debut novel over the last couple of days and, while I've managed to cut through the fog of 2nd-person-perspective pretension and actually enjoy it for the earnest piece of fiction that it is, I've found myself becoming more and more disturbed with each turn of the page. Why? Because "Bright Lights, Big City" is about me. Or, to be accurate, it's about every single mid-20's guy who has ever found himself lost in a delirious spiral of bad behavior that's structured within a maze of career anxieties that is housed in a city both dauntingly large and unfathomably cruel. Or something. Look, my point is this: If you change every reference in "Bright Lights, Big City" from cocaine to booze, and if you excise the failed relationship, you've got a story that runs fairly parallel to my own, at least on a thematic level. Which is not something I expected from a book that was once turned into a movie starring Michael J. Fox, but there it is.